A New Day, A New Little Girl!

Today’s entry WILL be SHORT! Yeah for you all!!

No appointments, no real plans, it rained cats and dogs here on and off all day. A new day has brought a new little girl. During the entire day we’ve had no crying, no stomping of feet, only one “NO”, which was quickly followed by a firm “YES!” and no unacceptable behavior toward Kam. When we went shopping to the little stores near the hotel, she asked for many, many things. Most of the time I had to say no, but a few times I said yes. She would ask for more than one and when I told her “only one”, she complied very nicely with a cute smirk on her face, as if thinking “well, at least I tried” :)

I’ll take the opportunity to answer a few questions I’ve been sent and tell you a few things about Thea:

. We now call her Thea, not Qiuxiang. We’ve been doing that for 2 days and she consistently answers to it. The first few days, we used both. She told our guide that she likes the name Thea very much.
. Having blindness in one eye has not been noticeable to us. She doesn’t run into things and compensates very well.
. She loves to watch volleyball on TV and she loves the soccer ball we brought. I wish it wasn’t raining so much so that we could play in the park.
. She tries to use English words as often as possible. All day today, when we said “thank you” to her, she said “you’re welcome”. She must have picked that up yesterday from us using it!
. Our challenge at home will NOT be teaching her English. . . it will be keeping her fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. This is something I never looked into, but need to be diligent with now. We don’t want her to loose her Chinese language.
. She washes her hands like nobody’s business! Never a need to ask, she does it on her own (Ben, Janie and Eva, did you read that one? Ha, ha!)
. She is neat, meticulous and helpful. She re-packed her suitcase for me, with clean clothes folded neatly on the right and dirty clothes folded neatly on the left. When she gets home, she needs to be a little girl and I have to find a healthy balance with her.
. Her teeth are night and day from when we first met her. She brushes them in the morning and at night she brings me the toothbrush so that I can do it. I am meticulous with each tooth and the bleeding has lessened each day. She also wants to use the mouth rinse when she is done.
. She seems to have a very healthy concept of modesty and appropriate behavior toward men and women.
. We have not witnessed “indiscriminate affection” yet. That is when the adopted child shows affection to anyone who will accept it, not knowing yet where to place it. She is very mature this way, so far.
. She is teaching me that it is okay to wear a navy blue and red skirt with pink shoes :)

Our dinner was awesome! We went to the Thai restaurant a couple of blocks away. Each of us chose something we wanted to try and we all shared. The whole group went, except for Lisa, Chuck, Shawn and Sophia. Kam ordered fried squid in orange juice and it was delicious!

Funny episode with Thea during dinner. She asked to use the bathroom and I walked her there. It was a squatty potty :) She looked at it, looked back at me, made a face like “oh, man”, and groaned “awwwwwww”. I think she is ready to leave the squatty potties behind. Ha, ha!

To the AWESOME AHH families we traveled with more than three years ago to pick up Eva (all 18 of you!) – I miss you all! There are many moments during each day that I have great memories of each of you.

Have a great day! Only two more full days here in China and we’re headed HOME!!!

Best wishes,
Kari

PS - Anyone have a great recipe for chocolate bread, kind of like banana bread, only chocolate? I have it every morning here at the buffet and I must admit that I am going to really, really miss it!